I am just not catching on.

[Tyguy35]

Hey, so I will be going to Costa Rica this coming Friday I wanted I go to get great photo but... I tend to shoot and really high shutter speeds 1600-2000 for birds which then to brighten my scene I have to shoot 1600-2000 ISO aswell. I know lowest is the goal but I just can't seem to get the picture right at lower shutter speeds aswell as lower ISO. I also am doing my best to keep my fstop at 5.6 or lower. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for jungle shooting as aswell as shooting birds out of the jungle. Very frustrating not getting a sharp photo due to higher ISO and shutter.

 

[robbins.photo]

Hey, so I will be going to Costa Rica this coming Friday I wanted I go to get great photo but... I tend to shoot and really high shutter speeds 1600-2000 for birds which then to brighten my scene I have to shoot 1600-2000 ISO aswell. I know lowest is the goal but I just can't seem to get the picture right at lower shutter speeds aswell as lower ISO. I also am doing my best to keep my fstop at 5.6 or lower. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for jungle shooting as aswell as shooting birds out of the jungle. Very frustrating not getting a sharp photo due to higher ISO and shutter.

Ok, well I guess my first question would be what sort of camera are you working with? The noise vrs iso can vary a lot just based on your camera model. Some do a lot better in this respect than others, and it would be a good place to start I think to know about where your camera is at on that scale.

 

[Tailgunner]

Hey, so I will be going to Costa Rica this coming Friday I wanted I go to get great photo but... I tend to shoot and really high shutter speeds 1600-2000 for birds which then to brighten my scene I have to shoot 1600-2000 ISO aswell. I know lowest is the goal but I just can't seem to get the picture right at lower shutter speeds aswell as lower ISO. I also am doing my best to keep my fstop at 5.6 or lower. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for jungle shooting as aswell as shooting birds out of the jungle. Very frustrating not getting a sharp photo due to higher ISO and shutter.

I refer all questions of Birds to Coastalconn

 

[Tyguy35]

I am working with a D7000. It's a great camera I just suck. I will get a good photo 1 out of 50 shots. I will also be shoring other things hopefully in the jungle. I can freeze a shot perfectly but the problem is the noise and not being as sharp as I like. I m shooting with a 18-300 soon the 150-600 tamron when it's out for nikon. I know the 300 is not sharp to begin with maybe that's my issues. I shot on auto for way to long and now I am really trying to work Manuel so I can get those shots I want. Exposure metering is I think the more difficult thing for me. - is under exposed + over exposed but some times I will put it all the way up in the positive side but it really does nothing the picture is still way to dark. Is that because my picture is way to dark I always thought that is would stay on the negative side.

 

[Tyguy35]

Oh aswell do I set ISO to auto?

 

[Gavjenks]

1) Show us some of these photos. It's almost impossible to figure out what's wrong if you don't.
2) The Tamron 150-600 doesn't sound like it's going to help you much. In fact it will make things worse. It's even slower than your current lens. If you wanted to help with a new lens, you'd probably want something more like a 300mm f/4 (for roughly the same price), which would let you take the exact same shots with ISO 800 instead, and probably much Much MUCH sharper, since it's a prime instead of a crazy 17x zoom... Also, either of those lenses probably has better autofocus than your superzoom (more accurate)
3) It sounds like manual mode is probably not for you if you are confused by it to the point of not being able to get a proper exposure. I doubt this is the source of your main problems, but just as a side point, it's probably ONE factor holding you back unnecessarily. Manual mode can be good for some people, but if you don't know what the right decisions are yet / are confused (hence this thread), then you're probably not better off by being in control of everything just yet.
4) Are you sure 1/2000 is actually necessary to freeze a bird? They are generally a lot easier to freeze than something like a running mammal, since their body parts don't move as much in relation to one another. And are they even in flight? I'm not sure if you said. If they're perched, then you certainly don't need 1/2000

A faster lens and the possibility of not needing to go quite so fast might buy you 2 stops, + better optics, which might be enough to eliminate your noise and your soft images, respectively.

But again, post images first. It might be something much simpler than that.

 

[apaflo]

Oh aswell do I set ISO to auto?

For birds in flight I'd want the shutter speed to be selected, hence I'd use Shutter Priority and AutoISO. For anything closer to a static subject I'd want to set the aperture and let everything else float, hence I'd use Aperture Priority and AutoISO, except I'd change that to Manual Exposure and AutoISO if shutter speed was in any way a priority too (kids playing might be an example). For landscapes on a tripod you might as well make everything totally manual.

 

[robbins.photo]

Well the D7000 has very good lowlight capabilities and good high ISO to noise ratio - I use a 5200 myself and since a lot of the pictures I take at the zoo I've often had to push the ISO to well above 1600 to get a usable shot. My guess is that the ISO is not the issue. I do know that most superzooms like the 18-300 are a little soft and that might be part of the problem, the other recommendation I would make especially if your going to the jungle would be to practice using your autofocus points and don't use the area focus feature - The area focus struggles when you have a lot of elements in your scene and it's been my experience that your best bet is to take control and tell the camera what the focus point should be rather than letting it try to guess what the subject of the photo should be and what it should focus on.

 

[Tyguy35]

I may have worded it I get it I am just not getting results. I only ever shoot on single autofocus point. I am going to go to the conservation area tomorrow morning and trying using auto ISO with Manuel if I can't get that I think I will try it with shutter then aperture mode. If I can't figure it out by then I'm a lost cause haha. Here is one of my best photos this one is shopped a tad on a cheaper internet program I don't have the original on my phone it's on my girlfriends computer two hours away.

this photo is probably the only photo my exposure came out perfect. 2000 speed and 2000iso f5.6

 

[DarkShadow]

Also I suggest you read about ETTR (Exposure to the right) Here. Digital Exposure Techniques

 

[robbins.photo]

View attachment 66355I may have worded it I get it I am just not getting results. I only ever shoot on single autofocus point. I am going to go to the conservation area tomorrow morning and trying using auto ISO with Manuel if I can't get that I think I will try it with shutter then aperture mode. If I can't figure it out by then I'm a lost cause haha. Here is one of my best photos this one is shopped a tad on a cheaper internet program I don't have the original on my phone it's on my girlfriends computer two hours away.

this photo is probably the only photo my exposure came out perfect. 2000 speed and 2000iso f5.6

Well everybody has their own preferred method I guess, me I like aperture priority mode. I set my aperture and then adjust my ISO to get the desired shutter speed. Occasionally when I'm shooting small, fast moving birds I'll switch to shutter priority, set my shutter speed and then the aperture and let the camera pick the ISO, but I generally only use that in good lighting conditions when I really need to be sure i'm getting a certain shutter speed.

The sample pic you've got is pretty good really, only thing that I would do would be to may decrease the brightness a bit and increase the contrast a tad, it will look a lot sharper that way. Your shutter speed here is probably a lot higher than it really needs to be, 1000-1200 should be more than enough to stop motion on a bird this size. A shutter speed like 2000 you probably wouldn't need for anything moving slower than say NASCAR.

 

[Tyguy35]

Haha sounds good to be honest I was shooting the squirrel running so I had it at a high speed aswell as little tiny birds that were moving so fast. Now I know what he was running from. He didn't quite make it. Circle of life. My pictures are usually to dark that's my issue usually I see it on my LCD and it looks great get home and I'm like what the heck. I'll try a bunch of new things tomorrow or Tuesday thank you for all your help.

 

[DarkShadow]

IMO the exposure and PP could use some TLC. Perhaps like this.

 

[robbins.photo]

Haha sounds good to be honest I was shooting the squirrel running so I had it at a high speed aswell as little tiny birds that were moving so fast. Now I know what he was running from. He didn't quite make it. Circle of life. My pictures are usually to dark that's my issue usually I see it on my LCD and it looks great get home and I'm like what the heck. I'll try a bunch of new things tomorrow or Tuesday thank you for all your help.

Lol.. I know what you mean - I've had more than a few occasions where I was all setup and shooting one thing and then out of the corner of my eye I catch something else and I don't have time to adjust the settings, I just have to turn and fire. I think you'll find the new lens will make a big difference for you was well. I've been seriously thinking about getting either a sigma 150-500 or the tamron 150-600 at some point myself. I just recently got a 2x teleconverter and it works great with my Sigma 70-200 mm F/2.8, gives me a 400 mm at F/5.6 and the IQ was a whole lot better than I was expecting so I'm pretty set for now at least. But I've heard a lot of good things about the Tamron so I might just have to take the plunge myself at some point.

 

[Tyguy35]

Not so sure what I will do. I just want distance and speed obviously I'm not professional so I won't be spending professional money. By the way I took your advice and took perfect shots today thank you very much. Going out again tomorrow cause I'm so happy with the results of today.